 Welcome to the Clean Air Fund press conference at the third Sustainable Development Impact Summit. I'm joined today by Jane Berson, Managing Director of the Clean Air Fund, Katherine Garrett Cox, CEO of Gulf International Bank, and Christoph Wolfe, Head of Mobility Industries and System Initiative. As humans, we fundamentally need to breathe. That is a universal truth. And that air needs to be clean, but shockingly, 4.2 million people have died due to outdoor air pollution. That's more than malaria, tuberculosis, and HIV combined. That's an appalling statistics. Jane, can you share what that means for people's health, also for the economy? Absolutely. Here, it's 4.2 million people every single year, according to the World Health Organization, that are killed by outdoor air pollution. And there's actually many more that that statistic doesn't cover that suffer the consequences of the chronic diseases that air pollution either causes or exacerbates. It's more than a quarter of lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart disease, just a huge contributor to lots of really, really awful diseases. And there's recent evidence that air pollution is also linked to dementia and obesity. Because when you breathe in these particles, the very smallest ones don't just go into your lungs. They can get through your lungs into your blood, and then they can travel all around the body. And you might have seen in the news over the last few weeks, there's also been a study showing that pollution particles are found on the fetal side of the placenta. So it actually gets through the placenta to babies who start suffering the health effects of air pollution before they're even born. For kids, it's the worst. They have basically a life sentence of disease as a consequence of the air, either that their mother breathes or that they breathe. Because babies and small children are breathing a lot quicker, babies breathe like four times more quickly than your average adult, and their body mass is smaller, such a huge amount of poison that they're taking on. And they're often, the sources of pollution are very often quite close to the ground, vehicles in particular, which is where kids are breathing. So for children, it's particularly bad. So what is the mission of the Clear Air Fund? And to tackle this incredibly challenge that you're facing, we're all facing. So we launched at the UN Climate Summit yesterday with, we've raised now just over $50 million in new commitments for working on our quality projects all over the world. We're going to focus initially on a smaller number of geographies whilst we get going. And so we've chosen the focus countries of the UK, Geography of Eastern Europe and India. India and Eastern Europe, because for their regions they have some of the worst air. And the UK, because there's this period now where because of Brexit, all of our environmental legislation previously was from Europe. And we have this huge opportunity to go much further than we were under previous legislation. Also a huge risk that the legislation that gets put in place is much worse. So a very important time for focusing on the UK. And we're bringing together foundations from a really interesting range of backgrounds. Our donors, we've got six donors at the moment, and they're from completely different fields, health foundations, climate foundations, early childhood development and mobility. And it's quite nice to be able to bring them together in a way where normally those foundations wouldn't necessarily have partnered, but they all share for the same and some quite different reasons a desire to clean up our air. Globally there's been this effort to address this issue, but business has been kind of missing from that picture. Catherine, I know you personally joined the fund. What motivated you to be part of this? So I've known Jane for some years now and always been a huge believer in her passion and purpose. And when we got together last autumn in San Francisco we were having a conversation about how she was going to mobilize capital to address this issue and tackle the philanthropists. And it became quite clear that we had a mutual passion, although coming at this from a slightly different perspective. So I am truly delighted and honored to be able to be the first chair of the Clean Air Fund. And I think that ultimately, this is something that matters to everybody. The air is all around us. It doesn't matter whether you work in the private or the public sector, it's the same air that we breathe. And the statistics are truly scary as Jane has just been outlining. So I think that in terms of the role that business can play in this regard, one of the reasons that we're here this week is really trying to mobilize the corporate sector to step up and also fund this issue. Because I think that one of the things that is going to be absolutely clear is we're not doing enough and we're not doing enough fast enough around issues of climate change and air quality is a critical one. We had Mayor de Blasio speak earlier and he just said, people aren't doing enough. And so I think as the Clean Air Fund launches, I mean it's amazing if you think about it that we were able to launch with Jane and her team mobilizing the funders with more money than historically has been articulated and obviously committed to this space. So it matters for business because if people can't come to work because they're sick, it matters because if you're walking through polluted streets, you're going to have a huge number. I mean it's many billions of lost workdays that will unfold if we don't get this right. And so I think the really interesting thing is this interconnection between healthcare climate change mobility and how we mobilize people, not just from the philanthropy sector, but from finance and from foundations. So if we can have those groups working together, I think it's incredibly powerful. Christoph, you're here as a representative of the forum. How is the forum engaging with this fund? The forum is the International Organization of Public-Private Collaboration. And Clean Air is basically an intersection point of many different sectors. So I represent at the forum the work with partners in the mobility and transport space. And I come back to that. But the forum also works with partners on energy, on health, on agriculture. And if you look at the statistics, all of them are actually contribute to the topic of Clean Air. Now in the mobility space, our mission in mobility is to work on clean, safe and inclusive mobility. And all three elements actually are deeply connected with clean air. So clean, obviously, we have, we have, I tell you a few examples of what we do in the transition to clean mobility. So we have the Global New Mobility Coalition, which basically is a coalition of OEMs, suppliers, civil society, academia around the globe that actually works on electrifying transport and to converting transport to shared transport. So this is shared in electric and word it makes sense autonomous is actually, and the policy framework's around that and working together with cities very much on that. So this is that. This is the clean side. Safe, I mean, clean air and health are intimately linked. And personal safety and health actually are basically the same thing. And I want to make also the point on inclusive. Mobility connects people. The ones that are actually most exposed to clean, to dirty air in cities are the ones typically, it's a social issue, are the ones that are the poorest typically. And so it's a social issue, it's not a health, it's also a social issue. And as a forum we work on inclusive mobility. In many cases, in many places around the world, there are so-called mobility deserts because of the absence of public transit and actually shared models that are affordable so people can't move. And then actually they're exposed to mobility from diesel cars, et cetera, and then they don't benefit. I mean, they're stuck in their home. So I think all of that. So clean, safe, inclusive has to do a lot with clean air and that actually motivated us to partner with the clean air fund and to work together to make a difference. Catherine touched upon the fact that philanthropies had been involved but not at this level. So how has this, the fund different from the previous engagement and what have been the issues that they've dealt with? Well we, in setting the fund up, which we started doing about a year ago, we wanted to build on all of the work that has happened so far because there is a lot of great work already happening. And so we started to keep a list of the projects that are going on that are funded by philanthropy. And we realized over time that actually that was now become a database could be really useful for NGOs working in the field and for foundations making sure that they don't duplicate and that they build on existing work. So actually I have a report to brandish. We did publish a report yesterday called Clearing the Air which is the historical trends in philanthropic funding to this issue. We've looked at funding to outdoor air pollution over the last four years. It's increased from nine million globally in 2015 to just under 30 million last year. And the clean air fund is announcing 50 million this year. So nearly doubling previous commitments. Other headlines that were interesting to us were that of the previous funding, three quarters of it has just gone to three countries, China, India and the States. So there's clearly a huge need to catalyze additional funding to other geographies, especially Africa where we're gonna see lots of urbanization and where there is potentially the opportunity to avoid pollution before it gets to the critical levels that we're seeing in other places because as Christoph is saying, lots of it is about the infrastructure that you build in and what you bake in from the beginning and the options that you make available to people. So Africa would give, I mean, has an opportunity to potentially avoid this before it starts. When we're talking about this issue, we've talked a lot about the human individual impact, but what are the economic impact of air pollution? Well, it's huge. I mean, Catherine mentioned the billions of sick days that we're gonna experience if we don't tackle this. There is also, I think, I should be of high concern to businesses, a drop in productivity on any day with high air pollution levels. It's a poison, so it stops you concentrating. And there's been numerous studies about how IQ drops. There's one recently about Israeli students who have been tracked and on high air pollution days, they do worse in their exams. And that affects their whole career and ability to earn for the rest of their life this one day of exams. And it's something that's completely out of their control. There are also sectors that are severely affected. Air pollution reduces crop yields quite considerably and it reduces solar yields, the sun can't get through. And obviously tourism sector, the tourism sector, especially for international tourism is quite heavily affected. So we can see how it has an impact on the worker, on business, so how can we get industries to engage? What are the mechanisms that have worked in previous coalitions or funds that we've seen and how is the forum using its capacity as a platform? The forum brings together public and private actors. And in our work, we work a lot with cities. Cities are for impact on the ground for their citizens, they are the most powerful, basically public actor and they are rising to the challenge. We see not only in the city of London, we see in the city of Paris, we see in many other cities that mayers tackle this subject. And they are bringing business coalitions in together with health professionals to find much smarter solutions and much more elaborate solutions to balance the different interests. So we have people, we have OEMs in the automotive sector as well as suppliers that are very good in providing sensors, actually low cost sensors in the cars so you get actually an up to date real time picture of the air pollution of a city and actually you can see it and then you can start simulating what actually are the actions, activities that are needed in order to manage that. So these kind of, and it's actually because they know that cities are rising to the challenge and there is actually increased interest, so this becomes a business interest. So there's an industry actually in the making of preventing that challenge. I mean, at least in those four front cities and from there it can spread to other geographies. So the forum wants to bring together together with the Clean Air Fund. We have quite a range of companies around the world in automotive, in technology, in digitization with cities together actually to develop measures and technologies to take the challenge and to make a difference. But I think absolutely, I mean, and also building on what Jane and Christoph said, this really matters really because of talent. Talent is very portable and I think we all know what it feels like when you're walking around in a city that feels like you have cleaner and a city where you can't breathe. I mean, you think about Beijing, you think about Hong Kong on a bad day. I spend a lot of time in the Middle East and there are some cities there that, you know, it's extraordinary. And so I think, you know, to Christoph's point, it becomes a competitive advantage for cities to get this right. So absolutely, the Clean Air Fund is involved in an important project in London. I don't know if you want to speak about the Breathe London project because this absolutely goes to the heart of it in terms of being able to monitor and track what's actually happening to air pollution in the city. Yeah, absolutely. So we in London have funded the most granular network of monitors that's ever been deployed in a city, a combination of low cost monitors and Google are providing support with a regulatory grade monitor in one of their street view vehicles and they're driving around all of the various neighborhoods in London so that we can get data every 30 meters. And usually the regulatory grade monitors for good reason are on major roads and this is enabling us to pick up hot spots that wouldn't otherwise have been detected. It's also giving people who live in London the opportunity and the knowledge to make life choices. So it's helping school kids to figure out what route they might take to school which is safer and cleaner. It's helping vulnerable groups say around hospitals determine how they would get to the hospital and it's helping parents campaign for cleaner air. And at the same time, we're using this study in a city that does have a lot of regulatory grade monitors already to test how you might use low cost sensors in other cities that don't have such monitoring to see whether or not low cost sensors are ready now to replace in some cases or to further supplement regulatory grade monitoring to bring the cost of monitoring right down because there are some cities, well a lot of cities around the world and some whole regions where there's no monitoring at all and that absolutely has to be the first step in tackling air pollution is knowing how much there is and knowing where it comes from. And this is accessible to anyone. Yeah, it's called Breathe London. There's a website where you can see the data that live data is coming from the London project. Amazing. We have a few minutes left. I wanted to open the floor for any questions we may have. Just so that our live stream audience can also hear your question. Microphone is coming your way. If you can just say your name and the outlet you're with. Thank you. My name is Steve Ham and I'm a freelancer. I'm working with a group called The Innovator. It's a new quarterly magazine of international business that's coming out of Paris and also as a website. So first question is for Jane. Just if you could talk about, I mean there's a lot of efforts by governments and others on air pollution. So if you could talk about what specifically the kinds of projects you're doing with the Clean Air Fund that are kind of filled the gaps that others aren't doing. Absolutely. Well I think this Breathe London pilot is one of them. It's gonna take a long time and a lot of money to get monitoring in place if we rely on cities all over the world getting the capacity to build regulatory and the funding to build regulatory grade monitoring networks at the density that some of the cities in the West have them now. So looking to the huge steps that we have in the fourth industrial revolution with wearable sensors and much lower cost fixed sensors and like this work with Google potentially mobile monitoring to see to what extent that can replace in some ways regulatory grade monitoring on where it's useful and what for. On, and so that's on the data collection side. I think one thing that governments often struggle to do is awareness raising and communications. So a project that we're funding in India is a new group of doctors that have come together to advocate for clean air. It's led by an incredibly charismatic doctor called Dr. Kumar who has been a lung surgeon for more than the last three decades and he talks very passionately about how he's started to see much younger people come into his surgery with lung cancer and other problems. They're non smokers. They're in a family of non smokers and because they basically effectively have been smoking since the day that they were born with the air that they're breathing, they're coming with problems that he never previously saw in people of that age people who didn't smoke. So he's basically now hitting the streets and the headlines trying to draw attention to the issue. Another thing that we're doing is trying to network ambitious politicians. So Christoph's mentioned that it's often cities that are taking the lead in doing something on this topic more, I think, than we're seeing national governments doing necessarily. And we're funding the C40 Cities Network to run an air quality forum for all of their mayors. If you're interested in the topic, gonna have a big announcement at their annual conference mid-October about what mayors are prepared to commit to and we're encouraged about how ambitious mayors are being. And then I guess finally, and the reason for our partnership with the World Economic Forum, we are very keen to see more private sector leadership on this issue. I would say that it's largely absent to date. There are some few very good examples, but very few. And so one project that we're funding is with the Confederation of Indian Industry, running an air quality forum for CEOs of multinational businesses that are headquartered in or based in India because they're experiencing exactly these sorts of issues that we've been talking about, huge numbers of sick days, reduced productivity, whether you're a heavy emitter or you're a bank, your employees and your workforce is suffering the consequences of this. And there's brain drain associated with it as well. So businesses based in countries where and cities where the air pollution is really high are very engaged in doing something or have the potential to be. There's just few who have taken that extra step of taking a leadership stance on the issue. I would point to IKEA as being one of the leading lights. They've got a really interesting project, buying crop stubble, which is very often burned in India. It's one of the major sources of air pollution at certain times of the year. They're buying that from farmers and they're using it as a raw material for products. So straw mats, they're pulping it for kind of board. And in some cases, their supply chain is using it instead of coal in their generators. Other businesses are doing things. Uber, for example, just in London, is collecting a fund through charging their customers for electric vehicle purchase for their drivers. Google I've mentioned what they're doing with Street View. Nokia are innovating monitors in their phones. So there are examples. Katharine was mentioning Dalmia Cement this morning was talking about what they're doing. But you can kind of count them on the fingers of one hand. So we're very keen to work with the World Economic Forum to raise this issue up the agenda of the private sector as well as the public sector because we can do much more in partnership. Thank you. As we wrap up the press conference, I would like to ask each one of you, what is the one takeaway you want people to know about clean air and this fund? What is the one message or maybe the urgency of the situation that you want to share with our audience? I would say that clean air is a human right and we need to fight for that right because millions of people around the world aren't enjoying clean air. And I would say that business has a huge responsibility in this regard. And so my one key takeaway is that it matters and clean air and addressing climate change are inextricably linked and a huge threat if we get this wrong. So act now and make a difference. I'd like to add it's a joint task, it's a joint responsibility of public and private actors. Technology can help a lot and it's a joint leadership from private companies from the mobility industry, from health, from energy that can really make a difference. Thank you. I'd like to thank our audience in the room and on live stream for joining us for this press conference and of course my guests. Thank you all. Thanks. Thank you.